This blog site is a place for Anna Jaworski, author of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: A Handbook for Parents and My Brother Needs an Operation, and editor of The Heart of a Mother and The Heart of a Father, to keep readers updated on important news related to Baby Hearts Press and important information for the heart community. For more information about Baby Hearts Press, please visit us at http://www.babyheartspress.com.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Literary Festival

Yesterday Alexander and I attended a Literary Festival at Harmony School in Pflugerville, Texas. Lora Negrito had invited members of the Writer's League of Texas to attend and she was delighted when I responded, especially since I told her that Alex is also a published writer. She had tables for each of us.

Here is Alex's table:

We had the Highlights for Children and Disney Magazines that Alex had been published in to show the children that there are opportunities for children to publish, too. We forgot to bring Alex newspaper articles! Alex really wished he had brought the first few chapters of his book, too. He actually had two students very interested in his story line. He has some students who are going to check out his www.fanfiction chapters. He doesn't use his real name on the Fan Fiction site, so he had to tell the boys the name to look for to find his stories.

Here I am at my table:

It was really great that I had the galley/proof of The Heart of a Father. You can see it here next to The Heart of a Mother. The cover is really quite striking. Of course, the book the kids were most interested in was My Brother Needs an Operation. I had fun telling them the story of how K.C., my toy poodle, had managed to get in so many photographs, that Linda Ball (the illustrator) decided to work her into the story line.

As much as I enjoyed talking to the students -- and 4 or 5 of them had siblings with CHDs! -- I think I enjoyed even more seeing Alex talk with the students about his writing projects and achievements.

The school has about 150 students. They had the students come to us by grade (6th - 9th) a little at a time. There were several other authors' tables not visible in this photograph which is why it doesn't look like there are many people here. There were. The children split up and spoke to all of the different authors in the different sections of this room. Unfortunately, the photos of the other authors I took came out way too dark for me to post.

I think one of the things that I got the biggest kick out of was watching some of the students ask Alex for his autograph.

We had lunch with the main speaker for the Literary Festival, Maria Snyder, author of Poison Study, Magic Study, Fire Study, Storm Glass, and (soon to be released) Sea Glass. Unfortunately, the photo I took of Maria Snyder came out too dark. :-( She was extremely personable and very kind to both Alex and me. In fact, she impressed Alex enough with her presentation and luncheon discussion for him to get an autographed copy of her very first book (Poison Study).

Here's a photo of her that I found online:

We had a great time! Thank you to the Harmony School for inviting Alex and me to their Literary Festival and thanks to all the kind people we met yesterday. It really was a most enjoyable day.